Saturday, January 30, 2010
Designing Punks
Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog: "It’s almost 2am, and I find myself sitting on the floor of my apartment, surrounded by half-empty cans of spray paint, a roll or two of duct tape, a defaced Beatles t-shirt, what appears to be contents of at least three “junk drawers” and something that fell off of a streetlight that I’m using to create a makeshift leg brace for an expatriate of French Canada. When I wake up tomorrow, I will insert zippers in the side seams of a pair of blue jeans so that the actor can remove his paints without taking off his roller skates during a simultaneous costume-and-hair quick change that needs to clock in at five seconds or less."
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4 comments:
I really love to see all the process and thought going into the designer's head. Obviously that's what needs to happen, but it would be so easy for many to look at a play about punks and just copy that style. The designer is in depth looking at how exposed these people could have been to punk, and how accurate their look would even be. The designer is also focusing more on the plot and characters than the actual "style" of the play - something i feel many designers do when they try to create the "feel" or "mood" of a show. I hope this project works out well, it definitely sounds very innovative and fun.
This sounds like a designer's dream, especially the problem solver designer. The culture that this costume designer would get to explore is incredibly rich in history. It's the type of history that really takes some digging into America's underground scene. This isn't a project for a "fluffy" designer, its a project for someone that is ready to get their hands dirty, and explore how punks grew over the course of their lives from suburban boys to grungy punks living out of shacks in run down ghettos. I would be interested to see how the designer develops the character from innocent child to grungy teen. What would be the transformation? Would there still be marks from his old life, or would he be completely changed? What sorts of clothes would he find?
This project is open to so much creativity, it really would be a field day for any designer.
I have to say, even though i want to be a stage manager, i love staying up late working on a design (project). There's nothing like problem solving in the final stretch to make a design come together and having the ideas roll into my head. This project seems fun and i hope it works out.
My favorite line of this article, is, "Logistically speaking, this show is pretty epic" .
This definitely seems like an interesting show, and I love the way that this designer has begun to visualize the punks. I've known people in the punk scene, and its hard to pinpoint one or two pieces of the scene that would really speak to the audience as authentic punk (something decidedly not Hot Topic or Trash and Vaudeville) because such a thing doesn't really exist. There certainly is a theme, but punk is about creating your own clothes to reflect who you are and how much you stand out from the crowd. I give him a lot of credit for trying to be inventive and creating those eye catching research collages, and even more for having the actors transform across four years (mohawks, too?!).
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